


Ping Pong Games (Killer Whales)

by Celestial_darlene



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Grief, Healing, M/M, Minor Character Death, PingPong - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:49:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23161246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celestial_darlene/pseuds/Celestial_darlene
Summary: If you asked who was responsible for the deaths of Mark and Donghyuck, most people would say the drunk driver who hit them last June.Jeno would say himself.If you asked Jaemin if he ever thought he'd be capable of love, he'd highly doubt it.(They both just want to feel again.)
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Kudos: 10





	Ping Pong Games (Killer Whales)

To be honest,  
Mrs Lee wasn't entirely that bad. Truly. He was just really rather impartial.

Jeno leaned back into the lumpy cushion, which had been awkwardly thrown on top of the too-small chair and had festered there for a number of years. He glanced down at his hands, watching as they picked at a splinter they had stumbled across. Slowly looking back up hesitantly, he found her eyes already upon him.

'I'm...' he started and raised his hands slightly to articulate before he paused, looking back down and swallowing the uncomfortable lump welling in the back of his neck.  
'Sorry I'm just.. Yeah. I don't know. '

She pushed up her glasses and smiled warmly and if they hadn't been doing this every Tuesday for the past four months now, maybe he wouldn't have noticed the terse frustration hidden in her eyes. '  
'It's okay Jeno,' she said tiredly, extending an hand across her desk in what he supposed she had meant as a comforting gesture.  
He looked back down and felt his cheeks flush and skin grow warm. His eyes stung a bit and he blinked furiously. 

The moment passed. 

Her chair groaned beneath her as she sighed and leaned back, dragging her hands through her short black hair. She alwasy looked funny when she did that, it exposed the silver roots she held hidden beneath the mop on her head, and she sort of looked like a mad scientist. Like if you left doc brown in the microwave for a couple minutes too many. 

'I know this has been hard on you.'

He flinched

'I think I've very been patient but its becoming..' She broke off, looking for a suitable word '...difficult.' She finished.  
She took another moment to gather her thoughts. 'My job is to help you. But you have to help me to help you.' She tapped her head. 'I can't figure out what's going in there if you don't let me in. You know? I can't do my job if you don't open up.'

'Sorry.'

'No don't be sorry.' She said. 'Jeno, seriously, look at me.'

He tore his eyes off of the clock and watched her as she continued.

She shuffled about and watched him carefully for a moment. From down the corridor jeno heard the telltale rustling of books, the scraping of chairs against the floors and the beginnings of chatter amongst the students. 

'They wouldn't want to see you like this you know.' Quieter this time

The bell rang. Jeno began to stand up, and he felt the deep sense of unease and that general feeling of ohmygodicantdothisrightnow burned deep within his chest. He stuffed it down, mentally imagining himself cramming in into a box and kicking it to the back of his mind. He blinked harder.

'Yeah.' he said softly. His hand was now on the doorknob. 

She sighed again. 'See you next week. If you need me im always in here.'

Yeah.  
\---------  
The thing was, he supposed as he sat in the bathroom stall, tracing his shaking hands over the graffiti, was not that he didn't want to talk to her, rather it was that he simply didn't know how.  
There were many things he wanted to say;  
Too many. So many in fact, that when he tried to let it all out, the list of things on his mind began to blur at the lines. As soon as one thing started to come out, another thing had freshly popped into his head. It never made sense- and it was overwhelming. It was easier to just not think too hard. Especially when he had so many thoughts flying around his head, each gradually growing louder and more impatient the more he tried to fit the puzzle pieces together.

It wasn't that he didn't want help either. Jeno desperately wished life could revert to the way it was before this whole thing had happened. He wished that his eyes didn't well up in tears and the strangest of things; for example, last week he had been doing the dishes. His mom bought the same dish soap marks mom used to use. The smell had triggered an unexpected memory and had caught him off his guard. His mother had found him there, on the kitchen floor, coughing out angry tearless sighs.  
He knew he frustrated her.

(It's like you're not even trying to get better she had said irritably to him on night after he hadn't left his bed all weekend. It'd hit im in the heart like a bunch of bricks and he'd screamed at her, calling her a bitch, amongst terrible names.

She'd apologised later, but the sharp words had stuck with him.)

He did want to get better. But it was hard. He didn't think he would. He wondered if he even held the capacity to do so.  
He missed being able to do most things without constant fear of the ghosts of his friends.  
Things hadn't always been this way.

He leaned back against the wall and readjusted his earbud, which had been slowly but surely slipping out from where he could hear Will Toledo's voice ringing out in the silence.  
This was how he spent most of his lunches; alone, upstairs and most importantly safe from other people.

Not to be religious or anything, but the sports hall was An Absolute Godsend. At lunchtime it was mostly empty, save for the occasional match or whatever, but for the majority of the time, it remained empty, silent and invisible to the general student population. Jeno loved the sports hall. Even more specifically, he loved what lay upstairs - a long-forgotten room with 5 tables, which had once been used for playing ping pong.  
(Jeno never understood how his school couldn't afford heating, yet had spent actual money on ping pong tables. They weren't even used. They just stayed upstairs, secluded and shrouded in dust.)  
It was really quite funny to him, how the walls were decorated in framed photos of students beaming, all dressed in various garb from the past. The gallery's most recent addition had been from the ping pong champioships, 1996. The students all worse the same grin, clutching a trophy proudly and all wearing assorted band tees and shitty hairstyles.

There was one from 1987, and showed a different group. The team had been all girls that year. They all wore various neon colours from underneath their demin jackets and bore wild eyeshadow.  
The phtos went all the way back to the 1981. 

What was so funny to Jeno was that at one point, ping pong had not only been relevent enough to be a sport wildly played throughout the school, and had also been recognised enough to deserve a whole wall displaying proud winners but also deserved a whole fucking room. 

He almost felt kind of bad for the students in the photos. He sometimes wondered where they were now; did they still play? Did they ever look back at their fond memories of their golden ping pong playing days? Did they ever sit at their desks at their shitty office jobs and wonder where their teammates were? Did they ever miss "the good times" so bad they couldn't breathe?  
Okay so maybe that last one had been projecting a little bit, jeno had to admit.

He still hoped their lives all turned out okay. Everyone looked so happy in the photos, delighted to be appraised; even if just in a sport as stupid as ping ping.  
Jeno hoped he'd turn out okay. He doubted he ever would, but he liked to hope anyway.

Another wonderful feature of the ping pong room, was the bathroom in the back. It was 100% guaranteed to be empty. It didn't stink of weed or cigarettes, the same wasy the other bathrooms across the school did and he never felt bad about taking up a stall.

To be quite frank; The worst thing about spending lunch on your phone with your feet curled into your chest as you sat in literally any other bathroom across the school, was not, as one might expect, the smell, or the sound of people shitting, but the chatter.

Students would duck in out of the corridors, and giggle as they shared secrets not to be told in busy corridors or the bustling canteen. They'd wait until everyone had left their stalls which always left Jeno in a difficult position, as he never knew whether to just walk out so they could gossip in peace or to remain in hiding in the hopes that they would fuck off. Both were equally humiliating .  
Here, in this corner of the school there was zero chance of that happening. On the off chance that someone would perhaps stumble into the sports hall, there was a very rare chance of them going upstairs. And there was a very very rare chance of them going into the ping pong room and a very very very rare chance of them entering the bathroom hidden in the corner.  
So yeah, maybe it was Jeno's safe space.

And yeah, maybe that was a little bit pathetic. 

No he didn't really care. It was better than spending lunch alone in the canteen. At least here nobody could see him or shoot him pitying glances.  
It was because of this that the last thing Jeno expected during his otherwise peaceful lunch break was the sound of somebody crashing in through the ping pong room door.  
Could it have been Mr Seo? Sometimes he came and reflected on his youth while wistfully gazing at the photos on the wall. 

(Those were the better days, he had laughed quietly one day to Jeno, after recounting the tale of how his team had won the ping pomg championships of 1993. He then had sighed and stretched to his feet before shooting Jeno a wan smile. 

[Mr Seo deserved better, Jeno later concluded. He was a literature teacher who lacked little talent in terms of class control and had cared less and less about asserting himself as a professional as the years had passed him by. However on the rare occasion Jeno ever did pay attention in class, he found Mr Seo to be a somebody who genuinely cared about what he taught - something found to be a rarity in SM High.])

After listening to the sound of somebody cursing under their breath and pacing around the room he came to the conclusion that no, whoveer was outside cauisng a ruckus was not, in fact Mr Seo.  
He waited hesitantly with his hand on the door, feeling unsure as to whether he should investigated or not. 

He ultimately decided to wait it out. Whoever it was could suck a dick. This was Jeno's space and had been since the start of the school year. 

Also the decision process had taken him so long that he felt it would be weird if he stepped out now. He didn't want whoever it was to think he had, Jeno didn't know, shit problems or something.  
It was pure accident, the way Jeno heard what the voice was saying.

It came from a guy, who sounded to be on the phone to somebody.  
'It's an absolute fucking shithole Jungwoo,' he was saying  
Jeno couldn't make out the response.  
'No, that's not me being judgmental or whatever. Dude I'm like in a fucking ping pong room right now. Everything about this screams mediocre and wierd. What kind of school has a ping pong room?'  
Jeno lets out an indignant snort. I mean, sure the rest of the school, for lack of a better term sucked ass, but the ping pong room wasn't so bad.  
'Whatever it's fine. I love you all and I miss you and I'm gonna ring you again tomorrow.' He paused, 'Can't fucking believe they don't allow phones here. That's stupid.' Another pause 'I KNOW. I'm gonna come here tomorrow 'cos it looks like nobody's been in here since like. I dunno, The 2000s at least.'

Pause.

'Yeah whatever. Bye. I love you.'

Jeno heard the guy mumble under his breath after the call ended and waited there in the quiet for a minute, the only sound to be heard was the tinny music straining from his earbuds.  
He paused the music and pressed himself closer to the door, hearing the unmistakable flick of a lighter.

He winced and cautiously pulled open the bathroom door, cringing at the groan of the door hinges before stepping into the open.  
'Uhhh, maybe like don't... do that.' He said, carefully but getting embarrassed anyway at the way he sounded.

They guy looked over and Jeno finally got a good look at him. He wore a pair of grey sweatpants, and orange t-shirt and his arms were decked out in colourful bracelets. He'd blonde hair, which obviously had not been taken care of in a while, judging from the grown out roots and brassy colour it held.

He held his breath, feeling stupid as the guy turned around properly to face him. He wore an expression that really gave off 'I don't care.'  
'There's smoke alarms in here. If you want to smoke everyone goes to the bathrooms and stuff.'  
The guy just continued staring, and gently placed the cigarette he had been holding behind his ear.  
Jeno stood there awkwardly for a moment before turning quickly back around and disappearing back into the bathroom stall. 

God he was such a fucking idiot. 

If Mark were here he would've awkwardly comforted him and Donghyuck would've be in hysterics, clutching his stomach and imitating him.  
That sent a pang into his chest.

Shit.

He locked the door and leant his head against the wall, feeling his face go on fire. 

He felt pathetic.

So waited there, half-expecting the guy to walk in and initiate some strange form of conversation but thankfully it never came. He listened and heard the sound of footsteps echoing and the door to the ping pong room swing shut. 

He slumped against the wall.

Yup. Just as Mrs Lee thought of him. Absolutely pathetic.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! I'm really surprised about this having that many words,,, I really out here surprising myself by doing the bare minimum.  
> I made a < a href=https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5M2PWed3QCsrvrYbB4I1MP?si=B47wQ8zgQXqquLnoXkisNA > playlist < /a > for this Story! T'would be very sexy if you listened to it while reading or after you finish the story. I'm gonna try update as much as possible while I'm off school. Also prepare for an insane amount of Carseat Headrest references baby! I would absolutely die for Will Toledo. Also nobody Beta'd this so please forgive me if it makes absolutely no fucking sense. Jeno's experiences with anxiety are kinda based off of my own and like social isolation and stuff idk. ALSO KICK IT IS SO FUCKING GOOD IMMA SOB.


End file.
